Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)
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8. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the number of children deemed at risk who have not been allocated a social worker, particularly in view of the recent Health Information and Quality Authority report on child welfare services in County Cork, which highlighted long waiting times for the allocation of social workers for vulnerable children, resulting in these children remaining at risk for prolonged periods of time; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [14398/15]

Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)
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I heard the Minister's responses to Deputies Troy, McLellan and Boyd Barrett. He said there has been a downward trend in the number of high priority cases awaiting a social worker. If that is true, it is certainly to be welcomed. I wish to ask the Minister about medium and low-priority cases. According to the recent HIQA report there were more than 760 non-priority cases in Cork alone. One would almost be afraid to ask about the national figure. What measures are being taken to deal with what are viewed as non-priority cases?

James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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My Department works closely with Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, to ensure that all children identified as needing a social worker service receive one.

Tusla figures indicate there were 27,710 open cases at the end of January 2015.

These provisional figures show that 7,787 of these were waiting to be allocated a social worker. Around 30% of these were deemed to be high priority. Children in the high priority category include those needing further assessment of their situation, children who have recently come into care or some whose placement is at risk of breaking down. All cases awaiting allocation are monitored and reviewed regularly by the duty social work teams. Tusla is also undertaking a national review of open cases to determine how best to address service demands.

While this offers some assurance, work is continuing to ensure that all children who need an allocated social worker have one. Tusla has reported that the number of children waiting for a social worker decreased over 2014. Nationally, high priority cases waiting less than three months to be allocated a social worker almost halved over the course of the year, and in Cork the reduction in all high priority cases awaiting allocation was 66%. This reduction suggests that quality assurance and national standards are helping to deliver service improvements.

Tusla is also working to improve staffing complements and has introduced schemes for maternity cover and support for new entrants. We have previously discussed the turnover of social workers at during Question Time in the House. Thankfully in this country the turnover of social workers is much lower than in many other Western countries. That is a credit to our social workers. The nature of the work is extremely demanding and challenging and Tusla's work to improve the schemes to support new entrants is very important.

Reducing the number of children waiting to be allocated a social worker is one of the core objectives for Tusla in meeting the current and future needs of our most vulnerable children.

Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)
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I do not presume for a second that this is an easy area to deal with. In his reply the Minister referred to the high priority cases. While they are of major concern, I asked about those of a medium or lower priority. How many of them are there?

There is little doubt that there are significant challenges in this area and there is not quite enough allocation. Deputy Boyd Barrett linked this area with mental health. In a place like Wexford, where there is no residential institution for people with mental health challenges, the lack of help in this area is glaring. People in Wexford are told to go either to Newcastle or Waterford although the centres there have not improved, a fact the Minister would be familiar with from having been in the Department of Health.

Does the Minister agree that if social workers do not deal with problems at an early stage that will move the burden to the mental health services? They need to deal not only with the high priority cases but also the low and medium priority ones. This must be a challenge for the Government. It needs to deal with the problem at source. I know there is not a bottomless pot of money to deal with these cases but the Government is sowing financial and social problems for the future by not dealing with them at an early stage.

James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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I could not agree more with the Deputy. The issues need to be dealt with before referral to social workers. That is the point of the Child and Family Agency and of all the non-governmental organisations, NGOs, the Department interacts with. On Monday we launched an excellent programme Tusla is introducing around far earlier intervention. We are moving away from crisis intervention and late intervention to early intervention and prevention. Many of the issues that arise can be prevented from ever escalating if parents get support from the Child and Family Agency and the other agencies that abound to help them prevent a situation escalating to the sort of problem that does require referral to social workers.

The Deputy asked me a specific question about the lower priority cases. I have the figures for Cork: in the 12 months prior to the inspection the service received 4,926 referrals.

Figures supplied to HIQA indicated that there were 4,071 open cases in the area. Of these 1,167 were unallocated and 2,904 were allocated a social worker.

Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)
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The Minister would probably agree that the need is still a lot greater than what the facility can provide due to a lack of resources. The Minister mentioned that the turnover in Ireland was impressive by comparison with European standards. I am not familiar with what they are at European level. I noted, however, that in January the HSE data showed that between 2010 and 2013, 326 social workers left their positions, which is a rate of one per week. Of these, 208 resigned. HSE data show that social workers are almost twice as likely to resign their position compared to managerial or administration staff in the HSE. Perhaps we should pay social workers more than we pay those in administration, given that they do not seem to be leaving administration jobs. We probably have too many of them in Ireland, yet we do not have enough front-line staff who are paid well enough. Would the Minister agree with that?

James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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There has been quite a reduction in the number of administrators right across the HSE in what was the predecessor of the Child and Family Agency. It is a considerable reduction because that issue was exercising many people on that side of the House before this Government took office.

The Deputy asked about numbers. Of the cases awaiting social workers, 234 were assessed as high priority, 790 medium priority and 143 low priority status. The area had 93 children on the child protection notification system at the time of the inspection, all of whom had an allocated social worker.

To revert to the Deputy's earlier point, we certainly want to get into the area of prevention and early intervention. We also want to ensure that social workers are doing the work that they alone can do, and that their time is not being taken up by using outmoded IT or having no IT, and filing reports that clerical staff could be doing. When we talk about administrators, let us always bear in mind that we get much better bang for our buck if we have clerical staff supporting the professionals, especially social workers.